Smart pacifier among best of British startups (pictures)

A Bluetooth pacifier and a smartphone keyboard with five buttons are among the best British tech being shown off at this year's MWC.

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The best of British startups are vying for a place in the Smart UK Project, the winners of which will be shown off at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. We took a look at some of the entrants.

First up is the 5-Tiles keyboard, that has -- you guessed it -- five tiles. It relies heavily on gestures, maximizing screen space, making it well-suited for small-screen devices like smartwatches.

The Smart Pacifier links to your phone over Bluetooth and records your baby's temperature over time. If your little nipper becomes ill, you can give accurate readings to your doctor to help. It's a prototype for now, but the finished product -- with teat -- will cost around 20 British pounds (about $33).

For the busy professional, Lowdown tells you not only when your meeting is, but where it is, how to get there, which of your clients you're meeting, and links you to their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles so you can do some last-minute research on them on your way. Want to secure the Collins account? Lowdown could help.

With RouteShoot, you can record footage of your journey on your phone along with GPS data, allowing you to see both map and video on a computer later. Handy to either record your ski run and show how far you went, or for business owners to keep close track of where staff members are driving in the company cars.

Among the exhibitors was an improved voice-recognition tool for commerce sites from Capito. Here, we see it being used to pull up football (or soccer, if you prefer) results, and place bets on the matches.

Movirtu meanwhile allows you to virtually separate your phone number from your SIM card, letting you take calls from devices like your tablet or laptop without needing to touch your phone. It's not a service you can buy now however -- Movirtu is hoping mobile networks will buy into its system and offer it to the customers.

And last but not least, we have PeachInc. Brilliant name aside, this company uses tiny QR codes to send tickets for sports games or concerts to your mobile. While that's not new, PeachInc uses QR codes so small that they can be sent over SMS to old feature phones like the Nokia 3210.